Life in Ladakh - Film screening in Mumbai

Dear Friends,

The Himalayan Club in association with Jana Seva Samiti, Vile Parle is pleased to announce the first event of the upcoming exciting season with screening of 2 films - Jungwa and The Shepherdess of the Glaciers by director Stanzin Dorjai Gya & Christiane Mordelet.

In 2010, severe rain induced by climate change devastated a remote area of Ladakh. A few years later, Stanzin Dorjai, a local filmmaker, returns to the affected areas to interview people and to talk about how global warming has changed their lives. Confronted with the incomprehension of a people who have always lived in harmony with their natural surroundings, this film shares with their worries and concerns. And it speaks to us about the spiritual relationship that has always bound them to nature.

On a rock-strewn mountain, in Ladakh, lives shepherdess Tsering with her flock of 250 sheep and pashmina goats. We follow Tsering’s solitary movements over a year, from her home village to the high plateaus where she acts as midwife to her goats, warms batteries on a cooking pot and occasionally sings to herself and the surrounding landscape. Her only access to events in the outside world is via a small transistor radio and she faces the troubling presence of wolves and a snow leopard daily. Having turned 40, Tsering now finds the pastoral life physically challenging, while climate change is endangering her livestock. Packed with stunning images of the Gya-Miru Valley, The Shepherdess of the Glaciers reveals the ancestral wisdom of those Ladakhi shepherds whose environment and livelihoods are under severe threat.